


give me mercy no more

by nosecoffee



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Light Smut, Pre Season 3, Wings, brief OC - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:26:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15721944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: (that's a kindness you can't afford)*She’s backlit from the lights in the shelving, and she looks almost ethereal. She’d punch him if she knew he was thinking something like that. “And why would someone kidnap you just to dump you in the desert?”Lucifer has to admit it’s a good point. “Hope that I'd overheat?”





	give me mercy no more

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "It Will Come Back" by Hozier, because his whole album gives me feels about these two
> 
> I haven't watched S3 yet, they only have two seasons on Australian Netflix and Putlocker's being a bitch, so please forgive me for how inaccurate this is

He wakes with a boot to his ribs.

Lucifer coughs and rolls away from where the offending boot came from. Someone above him gasps. "Oh my god, dude, I thought you were fucking dead!" The someone yells, and there's a thump as they drop to their knees, beside him.  
  
Lucifer cracks open his eyes, feeling crusty and thirsty and utterly destroyed in terms of soreness. Leaning over him, backlit by the sun, is a girl with freckles on every inch of skin across her face and chest that he can see, and dark hair, blowing in her face.  
  
He pushes her away, and sits up, groaning at the ache in his lower back. "Please don't bring him into this." He croaks, and coughs. His hand goes to the tender part of his chest where the girl kicked him with her heavy duty boots.  
  
The girl is still holding her hands in front of her, as if reaching out to touch him, but holding herself back, a bit. "Dude." She says, looking at something over his shoulder.  
  
Lucifer groans, again. "What?" He turns to look over his shoulder and feels an extra appendage move with him. A wing. "Oh, for fucks sake."  
  
The girl continues to stare at him, sitting back on her heels. It can't be comfortable. Her knees are bared by her khaki shorts, and they're digging into the hot sand beneath them. "Did I just walk into some weird cult thing? Because if I did, I'm real sorry."  
  
"If it is, I was unaware." Lucifer admits. He looks around them. It's just miles and miles of desert on any side. "Sorry, where are we?"  
  
"Nevada desert." The girl replies, mouth creased into a matter-of-fact smile. "Or somewhere near there. I'm a little lost myself."  
  
Something hits him. "What year is it?"  
  
The girl seems alarmed by his suddenness. "It's still twenty-eighteen, dude." She tells him in an attempted soothing voice. "I'm assuming that's what it was when you were last awake."  
  
"Do you have any water?" He glances over her shoulder and sees a small jeep a few metres away. "I'd say that I'm dying of thirst, but I can't really die, so I'm just really thirsty."  
  
"Oh, sure, hold on." The girl picks up a discarded litre-full water bottle out of the dust. "You sure look pretty crispy."  
  
"I _feel_ crispy." Lucifer admits, and takes the water bottle she offers, gratefully. She's wearing a grey tank top and a dark blue button up over it, the sleeves rolled up and the bottom tied up over her belly. It's an odd getup, but he doesn't think he really gets to judge, right now, as she's being so decent to him.  
  
"Sorry," the girl says, when he's emptied the water bottle, "did you say you can't die?"  
  
Lucifer shrugs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "That is, indeed, what I said, darling. What did you say your name was?"  
  
"I didn't." The girl tells him, seriously. Her hair is curly, ridiculously so, and half tied back, at the top. The rest of it is cut to shoulder length and brushes her bare collarbones. "But it's Puck. Puck Villinueva."  
  
"Great name." He informs her, and struggles to his feet. He's still wearing the dress pants that matched the rest of the suit that is currently missing. They're covered in sand and a bit of blood. His hair feels pretty sandy too. And sore. He sways and Puck catches his arm, steadying him. The injury that knocked him out is making him dizzy. It's weird that anyone could get the jump on him, especially if Chloe wasn't around, and even weirder that it's still affecting him. "I'm Lucifer Morningstar."  
  
Puck tucks the water bottle into the crook of her elbow and begins to lead him back the way she obviously came, if the indents in the sand in front of them mean anything. "Like the Devil, Lucifer?" She asks.  
  
He chuckles. "Exactly like that, Puck, my dear. And depending on who you ask, I am actually the Devil."  
  
Puck frowns, and opens the passenger side door, shoving him inside. Lucifer notices, somewhat belatedly, that his wings have folded away, and relaxes into the soft seat. "Why would the Devil have huge, beautiful, white wings?" Puck asks, before closing the door.  
  
Lucifer waits for her to round the car, toss her empty water bottle in the backseat, and climb into the drivers seat before replying, "Ask God."  
  
Puck snorts. "Okay, smartass." She turns the key in the ignition and the car comes to life. Cold air sprays at him from the vents, and he sighs, relieved. "Where do you hail from, when you're not lying, half-naked, in the middle of the Nevada desert?"  
  
"LA." Lucifer replies, sinking into his seat, wanting to sleep.  
  
"No way, me too." Puck says, and turns down the volume of whatever New Age music she has blasting from the speakers. She begins to drive away from where she found him, along faint tire tracks that indicate where she came from.  
  
"Not to be hypocritical," he begins, and glances over at her. There are a multitude of bead and leather bracelets on her right wrist. Her nails are painted white, but it's chipping. "But what were you doing in the desert?"  
  
Puck breathes in, deeply, and sort of swallows, staring out the windshield. There's nothing but desert stretching out in front of them. "If you'd believe it, I just kind of had a feeling that it was something I had to do. I just kinda got up in the morning, got in my car and drove out here. Like some kind of divine intervention, or whatever."  
  
Lucifer can't help but laugh.  
  
"What?" She asks, glancing over to him, quickly, as she pulls onto the empty road.  
  
"Oh," Lucifer says, without humour, "it's just so like Dad to pull me away from my life, give me something I don't want, and then drag some poor innocent person into it."  
  
Puck purses her lips, shifting the gear stick with unnecessary force and getting up to speed. "Hey, I'm not complaining, you're, like, the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me." She informs him, and then reaches into a cup holder full of jellybeans. The next thing she says is spoken through a mouthful of lollies. "I mean, you literally had wings when I found you."  
  
"Yes, well, I'm sure there are more interesting things to come." And he means it. Knowing the people in his life often end up in sticky situations, he actually feels bad for Puck. He suspects she deserves better than getting her throat slit because she was seen speaking to him.  
  
"Thanks, bud," she snorts, and gestures for him to take some jellybeans, too, "but I'm not the type to end up in interesting situations."  
  
"Yet," he gestures vaguely in her direction, "here you are."  
  
"Yeah." Puck agrees, faintly. Silence falls, and Puck sings along, quietly, to the song playing from the car speakers. It sounds familiar, but Lucifer doesn't know it well enough to join her. Instead, he sit there, working on his breathing, feeling the burns on his shoulders and back healing up. He's not sure if Puck notices, but even if she does, it's not like that would be the weirdest thing she's seen him do.  
  
And suddenly she's speaking again. "On that note; saving the Devil from the desert, how does that look in my books?" She asks, glancing over to him. Lucifer frowns at her, trying to convey _what on earth are you talking about?_ It must work because she scrambles to add, "Does that make me blessed or some shit? I'm not cocky; just a bit curious."  
  
"Well," he huffs, shifting in his seat, "there certainly isn't a place in hell reserved for you, you can count on that."  
  
"But what does it _mean_ for me?" Puck insists, not taking his charitable answer in stride.  
  
Lucifer mulls it over and then sighs, "Well, I suppose I might owe you a favour, or something."  
  
"The Devil owes me a favour?" Puck murmurs, incredulously. The song changes to something slower with a strong drum beat that has her kind of hopping in her seat.  
  
"It seems that way, Puck, my dear." Lucifer says, instead of pretending he didn't hear it. And then something occurs to him. "In that case, what is it you desire?"  
  
"Huh?" Puck turns to look at him, curiously, and catches his gaze. Her foot presses down, slowly, on the brake and they stop. She's still staring, caught in the compulsion.  
  
"Tell me what it is you desire most in the world." He presses, sitting up properly so she doesn't bend her head at such a weird angle.  
  
"...I want to be in love." She says, tentatively. Her voice shakes as she says it, as if she really is so hesitant, like she's embarrassed to say. He's a little taken aback by her answer. "Not just meaningless sex, or a relationship for the sake of a relationship. I want something real, I want someone I can laugh with, I want someone to cook breakfast for, and I want someone who'll have sex with me who isn't just pitying me."  
  
"Oh." Lucifer says, and the moment breaks. Puck shakes her head and gets the car up to speed, again, looking like she's internally berating herself for letting him hear her inner desires. "That's a bit more complicated than usual."  
  
Puck's eyebrows furrow down, making her frown a bit more severe than before. "How do you mean?" She asks.  
  
"People usually say quite material things." He finds himself explaining, as he runs a hand over his now-smooth shoulder. "They want money, fame, meaningless sex, etcetera, etcetera." At this he waves a vague hand and Puck chokes on a laugh.  
  
More silence. Puck presses a few things on her phone and the song switches, abruptly, to something more boppy. There's a thoughtful look on her face. The freckles on her face adds something to her face that Lucifer doesn't think she knows exists. She clears her throats, and when she glances to be sure she has his attention, she says, "What is it you want?"  
  
"What?" Lucifer says for lack of anything better to say.  
  
She cocks her head. "You mean no one's ever asked you?" Puck inquires.  
  
"Not that I can recall." He grumbles, feeling too unguarded in this moment.  
  
"Well, you think it over, and get back to me." She says, finality in her tone. Lucifer frowns.  
  
"But I'm the one who owes you a favour." He protests, and Puck rolls her eyes.  
  
"I'm not concerned about favours," Puck informs him, matter-of-fact. "I'm just wondering what secret desire you have that no one has ever bothered to ask about."  
  
He feels a bit ambushed by her. He's still shocked that she's okay with him being the Devil, capital "D". It's why he finds himself saying, "You're a better person than me."  
  
"I think that's what you think." Puck counters and Lucifer tries and fails to hold back a yawn. "I think there's more to you than just Lucifer Morningstar, Devil, Prince of Darkness, kidnapped and dumped in the Nevada desert."  
  
"I think you're going to be very disappointed, Miss Villinueva." Lucifer tells her, honestly.  
  
She just hums along to the song on the stereo. "Why don't you try sleeping?"  
  
"And miss out on your wonderful company?" Lucifer yawns again, and frowns, wondering if perhaps she's angelic. "I'd never..." He falls asleep.  
  
~  
  
When he wakes up, it's dark, but they're actually driving on a road. There's a cheeseburger in Puck's lap, and a packet of fries in the cup holder that used to have jellybeans in it. She sees his eyes open and grins. "Fries? The McDonalds employee who served me totally thought you were dead."  
  
"I'm not _dead_." He mutters, indignantly. "I'm the _Devil._ "  
  
"Well," Puck snorts, and takes a bite of her cheeseburger, "would the Devil like some fries?"  
  
He eats them with a pissed off look on his face. She grins the whole time.  
  
"How far away from LA are we?" Lucifer asks, once the fries are gone and the packet is scrunched into a ball in his fist. He definitely recognises some of the buildings they're passing, now.  
  
"Only about twenty minutes or so more." Puck informs him, tossing the empty burger shell into the backseat with her water bottle and a pair of fuzzy dice that he assumes she bought to hang from the rear view mirror but never got around to actually hanging them from the rear view mirror. "You've been passed out for a while, now."  
  
"Good." He grumbles, not because of her company, but because of how  generally awful he feels, despite his head injury and burns being cleared up, already.

Puck taps her fingernails against the steering wheel, and speaks through another bite of cheeseburger. It's a wonder this girl hasn't been snatched up, truly. "So, what's waiting for you in LA?” She prods, eyes, dutifully, on the road. “I'm presuming your friends will have decided you're dead and organised a funeral, by now."  
  
"I sincerely doubt it…” Lucifer wonders how everyone will react to the news of his kidnapping. Dan might think it's funny, or take it too seriously. Ella will _definitely_ think it's funny. Chloe will - wait. “Oh, fuck."  
  
"What?" Puck asks, absently.  
  
"I was about to do something…” Lucifer contemplates his choice of words. Earth shattering? Mind blowing? Just a big mistake? “...huge, before I got kidnapped. I left her a voicemail..."  
  
"That's no good." She says, but she doesn't sound like she's really listening. Lucifer doesn't care. She doesn't need to know about every detail of his life. "D'you want me to drop you off at your friend's place, when we get to LA, or to your place?"  
  
"Oh, take me to mine." He groans. "I need a stiff drink and a change of clothes."  
  
"Sounds like what I'm gonna do when I get home.” Puck agrees. “Shit, _my_ friends probably think _I'm_ dead, too."  
  
"My friends don't think I'm _dead_." He insists. "But Chloe might well be pissed."

~

She's in the penthouse when he arrives. She's just sitting on his couch, sipping on a glass of something that looks like water, and scrolling through her phone.

Lucifer steps out, still barefoot, into the penthouse and the elevator closes behind him. Chloe must hear the way his feet hit the hardwood flooring, or maybe she sees movement in the corner of her eye, but either way, she turns and stops dead when she sees him, standing with lax posture and unruly hair, in just dirty suit pants.

Chloe springs to her feet, looking genuinely concerned. Lucifer assumes it's his state of dress that shocks her the most, as while she's seen him in very little before, it's always been in a put together kind of way, instead of the disheveled and tired figure before her.

“What the fuck.” Is what he hears her say. Her water glass is sitting in his coffee table now, condensation running down the side towards the surface of the tabletop. Chloe takes a few more cautious steps towards him. “I got your message - I've been here all night…I was about to leave.”

Lucifer wants to tell her. “I'm sorry,” he rasps, instead.

If anything, Chloe’s concern seems to deepen. “You're _sorry_?”

“You probably think I stood you up, again.” He explains, plainly. He wasn’t expecting her to be here. He thought she’d have resigned herself, again, sunken back into sarcasm and hurt.

“Actually,” she retorts, stepping forward, hesitantly, “it looks like you got kidnapped, and probably robbed.”

“That's what happened.” She looks too worried after he says that, so Lucifer quickly adds, “With some added heavenly intervention.”

Chloe’s look shuts down again, and the hands that had been reaching for him drop. “Oh, good,” she rolls her eyes, “because it wouldn't be a field day with Lucifer without some good old heavenly intervention.”

“I'm serious, Detective.” Lucifer says, gravely. He has to make her understand. She never listens. She never gets it. “One minute, I was standing outside the hospital, about to go to you, and the next, I was waking up in the Nevada desert with w-” Lucifer cuts himself off. Chloe raises an eyebrow.

“With _what_?” She prompts.

This isn’t something he can hide from her, any longer. Even if it means showing her his true face, she needs to understand. “With wings on my back.” Lucifer forces out.

There’s a moment of tense silence. Chloe’s face betrays nothing. Lucifer waits.

And then she sighs, looking flattened and disappointed. For some reason, he feels like a child, about to be reprimanded. “Oh-kay.” She says, lingering too long on the _oh_ for his liking. “Great. I'm _so glad_ you put this much effort into this excuse, because if you hadn't it would be so much harder to believe you.”

“I'm not lying, Detective.” He insists, desperately. Why can’t she understand? Hasn’t she seen enough strange things to believe that what he’s saying is true, even a little? “I _don't_ lie.”

“Right, yeah,” Chloe agrees, laughing without humour. She pushes her hands through her loose hair, away from her face, and continues, “But you _twist_ the _truth_ , and how is that any better?”

“I was going to see you,” Lucifer says, taking a step towards her and immediately regretting it when she takes a step back, in return. “I _swear_ , I was going to show you the truth, but-”

“Yeah, right, kidnapped.” She interrupts, finally turning away from him and heading for the bar.

“You don't believe me.” He concludes, sadly, watching her progress. Chloe takes a bottle of whiskey down from the shelf and pours herself a finger.

“I mean, you look pretty ragged, but otherwise why should I believe you?” She sighs, and takes a sip. She’s backlit from the lights in the shelving, and she looks almost ethereal. She’d punch him if she knew he was thinking something like that. “And why would someone kidnap you just to dump you in the desert?”

Lucifer has to admit it’s a good point. “Hope that I'd overheat?” He suggests, and Chloe scoffs, taking another sip. She’s drinking his good whiskey.

“Going to the effort to kidnap you indicates that they could definitely kill you, no problem.” She points out, wincing from the burn of her drink.

“I was kidnapped,” he persists, “and while I was unconscious - which never happens to me - my wings re-manifested.”

“Right.” She agrees, but Lucifer knows she doesn’t believe him.

Chloe finishes her drink, and that looks like it wasn’t comfortable. She walks past him, going for her bag, probably to leave. No, he can’t let her leave without telling her the truth. But she won’t _listen_.

“I'll show you, if you want.” Lucifer says, and Chloe picks up her bag, turning to him, with a tight look on her face.

“Oh, this'll be good.” Chloe says, faux-excitedly. “Yes, _please_ , show me.” Lucifer should really give her more warning, more lead up - for Dads sake, humans aren't built to cope with divinity this concentrated, this pure, as much as it sickens him to admit - but he doesn't.

He lets them unfurl and watches Chloe take half a step back, the bag dropping from her hand. Her blue eyes are wide, her mouth slightly parted. One hand is partially raised, as if that lovely soft human part of her is already begging her to touch them, stroke them, care for them, yet another is already fighting against that part in equal halves horror and fascination.

There's a war going on in her head, and it all comes down to what she decides to do with this information. Lucifer checks all the doors to the balcony and finds them firmly closed, so hopefully she won't decide tossing herself over the side is the best course of action. Then again, Puck saw his wings in the desert and dealt with it pretty well, no suicidal actions at all.

But this is _Chloe_. Chloe who he's known for much longer than a girl who met him in the desert, Chloe who he trusts with his immortal existence in it's more mortal states, Chloe who is staring at him as if he's grown a second head. Two wings probably isn't all that different.

Lucifer feels nervous, despite himself, and swallows the lump that appears in his throat. “Detective?” He says - dare he say it - meekly. Chloe's eyes snap back to his in an instant, wide and disbelieving. He's suddenly too convinced she's going to run. Lucifer wills the wings away and takes a step forward, hands out, palms forward. “Do you need to sit down?”

She takes a step away from him - with more intent than she had before, the way people often did when he showed them his true face - and it sends a crack through him. “So, this whole time, it was _true_?” She asks, slowly, quietly, incredulously.

“I never said it was a _joke_.” He counters, affronted.

“Yeah, but you acted like it was. And now you…” Chloe trails off, obviously distracted by the wings of the way her eyes linger on them is anything to go by. Lucifer clears his throat, and she jumps. “Why does the Devil have _white_ wings?”

“Ask God.” Lucifer grumbles for the second time that day.

She raises her eyebrows, and asks, earnestly, “What's the likelihood of him answering?”

“Slim to none.” He informs her, somewhat gravely, and shrugs to hide the wings from sight.

Chloe nods - almost _I expected as much_ \- and bites her lip. She keeps glancing at his shoulders, looking for something that isn’t there. “Can you bring them back?”

“Best not to.” And he would honestly bring them back for her, if he weren’t terrified that such concentrated divinity might kill her.

“Why?”

“Humans aren’t prone to dealing well with something so divine.” Lucifer says and sighs, walking over to his wall of drinks. He picks up a decanter and pours himself a finger of whatever’s inside. He’s too distracted to care, at this point. “My wings are heaven made and sent, and they're too much for a tiny human brain.”

Chloe huffs, folding her arms over her chest. “I resent that.”

Lucifer downs his drink and gazes at her calm expression. “Are you going to lose it, now?” He can’t help but ask.

“Why would I?” She replies.

“I just proved to you that I'm not just some guy who convinced himself he was the Devil. That I'm _actually_ the Devil.” Lucifer explains, drawing out words and gesturing sharply with his hands. “Doctor Linda went on a mental bender for weeks.”

“Your _therapist_ knows?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know.” Chloe answers, honestly, shrugging and sitting herself down on his couch. “Maybe I'm just so used to accepting whatever weird thing you say that an explanation so equally ridiculous and understandable like this doesn't affect me.”

“People usually scream hysterically and begs for forgiveness.” He comments, wandering over to sit beside her. There’s a bit of distance between them, but Chloe scoots over, practically pressing their shoulders together.

“What have I done that I need you to forgive?” She asks.

Lucifer can’t help but smile. “And that's why I wanted to tell you. Knew you wouldn't let me down, Detective.”

~

Typically, once he's cleaned himself up and gotten Linda settled in, for the moment, Lucifer heads off, hoping for a fresh murder to solve and being given one, because LA is nothing without its beloved criminals and all around ruffians.

They get pretty far into the case very quickly, to the point where they track down their main suspect to his house. Lucifer, as always, arrives a bit before Chloe, being one step ahead of her, but sending her an emoji riddled text. So, typically, in about the space of two minutes he's already got the main suspect pointing a gun at him.

And Chloe walks in.

She always has to walk in when someone’s pointing a gun at him, doesn’t she?

Lucifer sighs, raising his hands in surrender, and giving the nervous looking man holding the gun pointed at him a look that says _worst timing ever, right?_ She always has to walk in when he’s in a vaguely dangerous situation which wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous if she’d stayed the proper amount of metres away from him.

Chloe orders their murderer to drop his gun and put his hands behind his head. “We’ve got you, Joe. We know what you did.” She says, calmly, evenly, and Lucifer always feels like applauding her on her coolness in these situations. Instead of doing what she ordered, Joe Briggs, their murderer, grabs Lucifer by the shoulder and presses the barrel of his gun to Lucifer’s temple.

He watches, in dismay, as Chloe goes still, eyes wide, breaths slow. Their gazes meet and Lucifer tries to beg with his eyes for her to leave, now. He confesses everything without breathing a word, and he hopes she understands.

And Chloe, smart, calculating, his Detective with a capital “D”, says, “Okay,” and drops, slowly, into a crouch, placing her gun on the carpeted floor. Lucifer silently curses her. “Let him go, we can work this out.”

She stands back up, with her hands raised the same way Lucifer’s are.

“No,” Joe says, pressing the barrel even harder against Lucifer’s head. “You’ll arrest me if I let him go, and you’re both unarmed, right now. If I shoot him, there won’t be a thing you can do about it.”

Lucifer glares at Joe. “What is it with you humans and being so forceful? The gun is right there. It doesn’t matter if it’s centimetres away or right against my head, it’s just as lethal.”

“Lucifer.” Chloe says in her _I’m warning you to be quiet for your own good_ voice.

“Shut up, both of you!” Joe yells, dragging Lucifer back with him a few steps. “I _will_ kill him!”

“I’d really like to see you try.” Lucifer chuckles, despite the warning in Chloe’s posture and her eyes.

“Lucifer!” She yells at him. “Don’t provoke him!”

“Pretty cocky for someone seconds from death.”

“Oh, don’t be all poetic about it.” Lucifer groans, and glances, quickly between Chloe and her gun, on the floor. He sees Chloe follow his eye movement and jerk her chin in a small nod. “And, anyway, I have reason to be.”

“Keep your mouth shut and I might spare you-” Joe begins, but Chloe cuts him off with a faux-plea that sounds actually pretty real, and would believe if they hadn’t already formulated a silent plan outline.

“Lucifer, please, don’t be stupid-” She says, and he gives her a steady look.

Lucifer smacks Joe’s opposite shoulder and says, “Would you quit with the threats, please? They’re all so horribly cliché.”

“Do you wanna die, today, dude?” Joe asks, grip on Lucifer’s shoulder as he attempts to loom over him.

Lucifer gives him an apologetic smile. “I’m over it.” He knocks the gun away from his head, and pushes Joe away from him, towards the wall he was backing into, and hopes that the impact will shock him long enough for Chloe to get her gun. She drops to her knees, quickly, and has her gun, very soon after. She’s too busy cocking it to notice Joe taking aim at her, but Lucifer notices.

He steps in front of her, and sort of grabs her waist with his right hand, pressing her to his back. When the bullet makes contact with  Lucifer’s shoulder - exactly the place where Chloe’s head would have been if he hadn’t acted fast - Chloe gasps his name, sounding panicked.

Lucifer waits until after Chloe’s shot Joe in the knee and gone over to cuff him to lean against a wall and touch the wound, where blood is spreading through the soft material of his designer suit jacket, and hisses when the injury twinges in pain at the pressure of his fingers against it.

Backup arrives minutes later and as soon as Chloe’s handed over their murderer, she rushes over to Lucifer, getting first aid on the coffee table. “Why did you do that?” She asks, staring, wide-eyed, at him over the medic’s shoulder.

“He was going to shoot _you_ in the _head_ , Detective.” He replies, loftily, and winces as the medic extracts the bullet from his shoulder. “I obviously couldn’t let that happen.”

And she smiles, even though she still looks angry.

The gunshot wound wouldn't be all that much of a problem, truth be told, if Chloe actually left him alone, for a minute. If she'd just fuck off home, the injury would heal itself and he'd be good as new in the morning.

But, as it is, Joe Briggs confesses to having an accomplice. Their victim's wife, Hannah Dower.

So, of course, he and Chloe go after the estranged wife, and if she sees Lucifer wincing and flinching every time his injury protests, she doesn't say anything. He's glad. He'd rather not address it, again.

They track Hanna Dower down to a warehouse and attempt to coax her into coming in willingly. Chloe even breaks out the big guns; “If you confess it'll be a lesser sentence for you,” but Hannah doesn't go for it. Because, apparently, Hannah and Joe are more similar than Lucifer would like to admit, and, before long, they're hiding behind a crate as Hannah shoots, relentlessly, at their hiding spot.

“This is a bit of a sticky situation.” Lucifer mutters, and flinches when another bullet hits the crate. Chloe’s got her arm bracing over his waist to the crate and while it's not an unpleasant touch, it's not a place that's going to get them out of this. Their deranged housewife will not go gently into the night, it appears, so Lucifer pulls out of Chloe’s grip and gives her a grin that says _back in a sec._

She calls after him, but Hannah doesn't even notice he's there until he's plucking her machine gun from her hands. Then follows a series of events that end with Hannah ramming him, several times, into a rotting wooden support beam, and causing the loft fixture above them to come crashing down, almost on top of them.

Thankfully, the move knocks Hannah out, and only mildly traps Lucifer.

Upon recovery from under the rubble, and Hannah’s subsequent arrest, Lucifer is sitting on the hood of Chloe’s car, waiting for her to come back from debrief and drive him home. She's far enough away that Lucifer feels the gunshot wound in his shoulder begin to heal, and he's briefly relieved.

Then she wanders over and all supernatural healing ceases. Chloe sighs as she takes in his dusty, yet uninjured form. “You've got to stop doing that,” she murmurs, dusting off the arms of his suit jacket.

“Doing what?” Lucifer inquires, coyly.

“Putting yourself in danger, for a case.” She replies, tensely. Her hands are still resting on his biceps, even though there's very little dust left on the material, there.

“That's the job, isn't it?” He asks, almost like the old him who would tease and jab her, just to make her snap. And snap she does.

“No, your job is _consulting,_ not _Die Hard_ diving front of bullets and bringing buildings down." Chloe tells him, her hands releasing him and stepping back. She crosses her arms over her chest, rubbing the lapel of her coat between her thumb and forefinger.

“And yet I'm always where the action happens, heroically bringing down the bad guy.” Lucifer sighs, nonchalantly. He sees how riled up she's getting. He frowns; that was not the aim. The aim was witty banter while they ignore the awful truth he had revealed only a couple of nights ago.

“That's more to do with you and your unorthodox methods rather than your job.” She mumbles, staring at the ground. Lucifer hadn't realised that it had hit her this hard until now.

“Detective.” He says, standing up, and taking a step towards her. He doesn't make a move to touch her.

“What?” Chloe asks, looking up.

“It's okay. We got the bad guys. Crisis averted. You can stop worrying.”

“You got _shot_ today, Lucifer.” She says, gravely.

“Not the first time, you might remember." He replies, tapping his right thigh and watching her wince. "And it certainly won't be the last, either.”

“That's what I'm worried about." Chloe hisses. "This is a dangerous job. One of these days you're going to do something heroically stupid and die.”

“You know I'd dive in front of a thousand bullets for you.” Lucifer informs her, earnestly.

“Because you're invulnerable.” She brushes the sentiment off.

“No." He says, forcefully, and teaches her take a step back. Lucifer drops the volume of his voice. "If today proved anything, it's that I'm not invulnerable, not with you.”

“What do you mean?” Chloe asks, looking nervous.

“I mean that around you I'm not invulnerable," Lucifer admits, and sees the way her eyes widen with understanding, "and I can feel pain.”

“Then that means I'm the one putting you in danger!” She says, and pushes his uninsured shoulder, angrily.

“I want to be in danger with you." He says, holding up his hands to stop her from pushing him again. "I care too much for you to let some idiot with a gun ruin that.”

Chloe's mouth thins into a small line and she looks down at the ground. "That's what I'm afraid of.” She murmurs.

“You're afraid of me having your back?” He counters, softly.

“I'm afraid of you valuing my safety above your own." Chloe corrects him, looking up and holding up her index finger. "That's dangerous.”

“I'm always going to value your safety above mine.”

“Don't say that.” She rebuffs, looking pained.

“I mean it, Detective.”

“Don't say that! You just told me that you're okay around danger so long as you're not around me." Her hands are hesitantly curling around the lapels of his suit jacket, and zlucifer can do nothing but let her tug him towards her. "The minute I'm in the area, you're just any old guy who can be killed just as easily as anyone else.”

“So doesn’t it say something that I continuously walk into dangerous situations with you?”

Chloe stares, jaw squared and locked, eyes steady. She looks as though she has no way to respond to that. Lucifer feels itchy, and assumes the feeling comes from the blush in his neck. He's much too human with her.

It scares him how much. How with Chloe he's just a man, offering her everything he has and hoping she'll take it.

Something sets. Her shoulders push back. Chloe wraps her arms around his torso and rests her head on his shoulder. “Just try not to get shot, again.”

“That's just asking too much.” Lucifer scoffs, and she pulls away, rolling her eyes, but smiling. He smiles too. “Come on. There's drinks at Lux with our names on them.”

“But the paperwork…” Chloe sighs, giving the team of officers outside the slightly collapsed warehouse a guilty look.

“Let Daniel deal with it.” Lucifer coaxes, and Chloe rolls her eyes, but heads towards the driver side door, anyway.

~

It isn't anything like he'd ever imagined.

She isn't dressed in some pretty lingerie, and he isn't charming over a glass of whiskey or bourbon or whatever his chosen poison is for the night.

Lucifer is disheveled and rumpled, having discarded his ruined suit jacket and vest, his shirt rolled up to his elbows, and Chloe is wearing one of his pressed dress shirts and a pair of his boxer shorts, having been caught in the dust that had fallen when the roof caved in on Hannah and Lucifer.

She takes a shower, and he plays the piano, and when she emerges, hair wet, skin soft, eyes nervous and flitting, he simply moves aside to make room for her on the piano stool.

Chloe leans into his shoulder as he plays, almost falling asleep as he does. And he loves her, he does. How could he not? She brought purpose to his miserable existence, gave him a job, and told him not to be such a selfish dickhead, in not so many words.

She's changed his life, for the better.

So when he turns, calls her Detective with a capital "D" and she blinks up at him, Lucifer can't help but lean down and kiss her, however awkward the angle may be.

He almost expects her to pull away, but she doesn't. Chloe, brilliant, clever, gorgeous Chloe kisses him back, gripping him by the biceps and kissing him even though he's never been anything but trouble for her; even though he's done nothing to deserve it; even though there's still bits of plaster in his hair.

Lucifer kisses her until she pulls away and jerks her head in the direction of his bedroom. He's all too happy to oblige, taking her hand and following her into the room.

It's not sexy or sensual, there are no candles or massage oils or whips, it's just him and Chloe, barefoot and giggling like teenagers.

She seats herself in his lap, on the edge of the end of the bed, but she doesn't kiss him. It's strange; Chloe doesn't kiss him, she doesn't reach to unbutton his shirt. Instead, she reaches forward and gently traces her fingertips along the planes of his face, dragging along the line where his stubble cuts off, along the line of his eyebrow, tracing the curve of his lips. It's like she's trying to memorise him, like he's going to disappear any minute and she'll never get another chance.

Lucifer catches her hand and they freeze, staring at each other. There's something so sickeningly tender, so stiflingly genuine about this moment that he almost wants to pull away. It's not like him at all to let himself get caught up in a moment. He thinks she may be onto something, realising he wants to memorise the ever changing, ever shifting planes of her face, her body - there's so much to do, and he's stuck in this moment.

When he releases her hand, there's a curve at the edge of her mouth, almost a smile, and Chloe reaches for the buttons on his shirt, while his hands travel up, under the sides of her borrowed shirt. His fingertips graze her ribs ever so slightly, but he goes no further, all too aware that she could put an end to this at any second. Lucifer can get caught in a moment, but he won't let himself go until he's sure she truly wants this.

Once she's divested him of his shirt, she pushes him onto his back and her fingers trace the outline of the bandage on his shoulder. The soft press of her fingertips to the wound makes him hiss in pain, and Chloe pulls away, relieving the pressure. Lucifer wonders why she did it. In return, her swipes his thumb along a pinkish graze along the bottom of her chin from a fight the day before. She almost jerks awa, he feels her react, but then she looks down at him and sees the curious look in his eyes.

 _You said you only hurt around me_ , she explains and then leans down to kiss him, again, hand reaching down to pull down the zipper on his dress pants. Maybe he gasps, lightly, maybe he begs her to be gentle. Maybe she smiles and leans down to press a kiss just to the corner of his lips. It doesn't really matter, because while he's generally unafraid and unashamed in the bedroom, with Chloe he feels all the more free.

She's backlit by the golden light from the main room of the penthouse and by the moonlight shining through his wall of windows on the other side. Chloe's a vision, even more so, and just the same, as always. Once she's got his pants off, and has unbuttoned the borrowed shirt enough to display the off-white sports bra she's clad in, she allows him to tug her up the bed, up to the pillows. And she kisses him again, enough to make him breathless.

Lucifer's always been proud of how controlled he is in encounters like this, how he can kiss and pull away smiling instead of panting for breath. With Chloe, however, he can't catch enough air, can't breathe deeply enough, and maybe it's because she makes him more mortal than he'd like to admit, or maybe she's just that different from any other person he's been with. But maybe it's just because he loves her.

His boxers soon join the heap of clothes on the floor, and hers quickly afterwards.

And it's not anything special. She's still got a bra and most of a shirt on, and he's lying underneath her like he's never been anywhere else, like in his fantasies _he_ hadn't been the one above _her_ , but it doesn't matter.

She's different, for him, she's better.

Chloe lowers herself onto him and they both hold things back in that moment. Lucifer tenses against the mattress gripping the sheet hard enough to rip it, knowing if he was holding her he'd be hurting her. Sex has never been like this before. It's always been quick and sweaty and shameless. With Chloe, sex is slow and sacred and momentous. He feels like praying, as strange as it is.

He can't give Dad all the credit - after all, Chloe made herself who she is, today - but in that moment his mind clears enough to think something like _thank you for putting her here._ _  
_

She makes him feel holy, she makes him feel _divine_. She makes him feel like the moments directly before the fall, the anguish, the spite, the anticipation, and the victory. Chloe makes him feel like he's falling from grace and at the same time being blessed.

Lucifer doesn't know when the tears start to trail down his face, but he doesn't care either. He just meets her thrusts with thrusts of his own, continuing to clutch the sheets as if clutching her would break her into a million pieces. Her hands cover his, and they pry them, gently from the sheets, placing them on her hips, hot, smooth skin right under his fingertips.

Chloe notices him crying and reaches down to smear the tears from his face. She whispers his name and asks what's wrong, asks if she should stop, asks if he doesn't like it. He shakes his head, begs her to continue, tells her she's the best and he's sorry he hadn't met her earlier.

Chloe smiles down at him, fondly, and leans down to kiss his cheeks and his jaw and his lips, pressing their foreheads together in comfort.

She draws his orgasm out of him slowly. She coaxes him, she runs her nose along the skin of his cheek, just to the boundary of his stubble. She rocks her hips until Lucifer is arching into her touch, so confused that he's the one begging for release when he'd always thought getting Chloe into bed would mean making it about her.

But she's such a selfless lover. She tells him it's okay, he's okay, he's safe, he can come now, he's so good, and Lucifer turns his head into the sheets, eyes squeezed shut. He comes. And shudders into her.

Chloe climbs off him once he's gone soft and pliant on the bed, trying to regain feeling in his fingertips. She smiles at him, curved around his body and kissing his temple and his forehead and his eyelids, fingers carding through his hair, humming, softly.

No one's ever taken care of him, like this, no one ever thought to. He never thought he'd need it.

But, of course, _Chloe_ did.

As soon as he can move again, he's turning into her, kissing the skin above her belly button, as it's right in his face. He kisses down to her hips, and looks up, saying he'll stop if she wants him to. Chloe just smiles.

So he kisses the inside of her thighs, and he kisses what's between them until her fingers are tugging at his hair and she's breathing harshly, because she won't let herself let go.

Lucifer pulls away for a moment and lets his lips linger, lightly, on her skin when he whispers, "Please, for me." Just like that, she's coming. She shudders, bucking against his mouth, trying to restrain herself, tense and pressing down into the mattress.

When she's down from her high, his head is rested on her stomach, her hands still playing with his unruly hair, she whispers that she loves him, and it's almost enough to make him cry, again, but he doesn't. He smiles, presses a kiss to her skin, and whispers it back.

 

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked this, please leave me a kudos, and a comment telling me all about it. Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee, I'm always up for screaming about this show. Again, thanks.


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